Three years ago, Americans were cheering on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian military, for very good reason. Imaginative defensive tactics were thwarting what the Russians thought would be an easy walk into Kyiv with their assault. Ukrainians were firing from tree lines to halt lines of Russian tanks, targeting Russian generals who were using their cellphones, and eventually would use torpedo-carrying submersibles to sink at least one Russian warship and damage others. Unable to defend their naval ships, Russia relocated them to more distant ports. That against a country without a Navy, but with ingenuity.
U.S. military leaders were saying that Ukraine, with foreign matériel support but no foreign troops, was crippling the Russian military to the U.S.’s great benefit.
Zelenskyy had declined personal safe passage, remaining to be an ever-visible leader of a country that Vladimir Putin was eager to bring firmly into the Russian fold. His leadership appealed to soldiers on the front lines and to heads of state as he marshaled European and U.S. support. Women and older men were taking fighting positions, and Ukrainian spirits were high.
Ukraine contains considerable mineral and agricultural wealth, and includes Russian speakers along its eastern boundary with Russia. But it’s not difficult to imagine that it was Ukrainians’ relatively high standard of living and its political democracy that Putin did not want to have continue on Russia’s Western border. What he wasn’t delivering at home was too visible next door.
Across this country, blue and gold Ukrainian flags were on windows and car bumpers. Did what the Ukrainians were engaged in remind Americans of their forebears’ strive for independence from the British some 250 years ago?
Then the bloom faded. The Russian military leadership got smarter and regrouped, their factories producing weapons; hefty enlistment payments attracted men from poor towns and villages.
So, too, on the Ukrainian side, many more enlistees were needed. Ukraine was able to advance into Russia where the Russians were unprepared, square miles it still holds. Russia occupies a narrow but meaningful strip of Ukraine.
Where is this now? In the hands of a U.S. president who was never supportive of Ukraine, who sees the U.S. as exiting the world stage, and who embraces authoritarian leaders. He is doing that by favoring the Russians with the wild claim that it was Ukraine that began the war and demanding that the U.S. not vote on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion.
The president is also transactional, although not with partnerships, shared interests or soft diplomacy. He is forcing Ukraine to give up half a trillion dollars in mineral wealth for a few vague words of support.
What Ukraine ought to be receiving in exchange for ending the fighting are foreign troops along its border with Russia as a trip wire, which is what the U.S. has in place in South Korea and in Germany, backed up with U.S.-made military matériel. No U.S. troops.
As significantly, it also ought to be included in the European Union, as the 28th country to collaborate on trade and environmental issues. Putin fears any of that, working with the West, of course, but it is not NATO.
With firm negotiations, a trip wire and EU membership might be attained. The end of the fighting must have appeal for Russia. It would have the territory it has taken from Ukraine, its broad economy would regain its strength and its leadership would be better embraced.
But the United States has a president who is handing it all to Russia with nothing in return, turning 180 degrees against Americans with their funding and supportive spirit for a country that for three years has stood up to Vladimir Putin’s aggression. Shameful.
